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Spurs Odyssey Preview - Spurs v Sunderland, 07.04.14

· Last Season's Corresponding Game - Spurs 1 Sunderland 0
· This Season's game - Sunderland 1 Spurs 2
· This week - last year
· What happened in the Premiership in Match 33 2012-13

· See the current injury list for all Premiership Teams
· All the Spurs Stats you could hope for here! THFC6061 Sports Stats


Full League Record against Sunderland
 
Premier       Pl   W   D   L    For-Ag  Pts
Home          12  10   1   1    24 - 9  31
Away          13   6   3   4    19 -16  21
==========================================
Total(Prem)   25  16   4   5    43 -25  52
=========================================
Football Lge
Home (Div 1)  37  14  12  11    57 -45  42
Away (Div 1)  37   8  11  18    31 -60  29
==========================================
Total(Div 1)  74  22  23  29    88-105  71
==========================================
Football Lge
Home (Div 2)   1   0   0   1     2 - 3   0
Away (Div 2)   1   1   0   0     2 - 1   2
==========================================
Total(Div 2)   2   1   0   1     4 - 4   2
==========================================
Total(Prem)   25  16   4   5    43 -25  52
Total(Div 1)  74  22  23  29    88 -105 71
Total(Div 2)   2   1   0   1     4 - 4   2
==========================================
Grand Total  101  39  27  35   135-134 124
==========================================

Last Six Premier League results:-

Spurs    -  LWLLWL

Norwich    1-0   Spurs
Spurs      1-0   Cardiff
Chelsea    4-0   Spurs
Spurs      0-1   Arsenal
Spurs      3-2   Southampton
Liverpool  4-0   Spurs

S'derland - LLDLLL

S'derland  0-2   Hull
Arsenal    4-1   S'derland
S'derland  0-0   C. Palace
Norwich    2-0   S'derland
Liverpool  2-1   S'derland
S'derland  1-2   West Ham

Pos            P  W  D  L   F-A   GD  Pts
 7. Spurs     32 17  5 10  40-44  -4   56
20. S'derland 30  6  7 17  28-48 -20   25

They don't like Mondays

It's our first (and last) Monday night game of the season. We haven't played "Monday Night Football" since February 25th last year, when we beat West Ham 3-2, and went into 3rd place. Wouldn't that be nice?

Unfortunately, of course, while we have been watching from our armchairs over the week-end, the top four seems to be even further away from Spurs' reality. Most Spurs fans gloated over Everton's 3-0 win over Arsenal, but I think a draw would have been a better mathematical result for us. In truth though, I gave up on the top four a while ago, and with United beating woeful Newcastle 4-0 away, they took our sixth place, which we can regain tonight with a win over Gus Poyet's Sunderland.

Speaking of "woeful Newcastle", they seem to be about the only team Sunderland can beat these days. The "Toon" was the last team to suffer Premier League defeat at the hands of Sunderland, whose league form over the last 6 games is even worse than ours. That's saying something!

We've lost four, but won two of our last six, whereas Sunderland haven't managed a win in that time. Did they have their eyes taken off the survival ball by their Cup runs? They had a marvellous Capital One Cup run all the way to the final, beating Premier League rivals Southampton, Chelsea and Manchester United along the way, but they couldn't match Man City at Wembley.

Gus also took his team to the FA Cup quarter-final, but they got well beaten by Steve Bruce's Hull.

Steve Bruce was the last Sunderland manager to beat Spurs, in April, 2010, and I have to tell you that the referee that day was Lee Mason, who is in charge tonight. That April match was the day Darren Bent came back to haunt us, and Harry Redknapp, scoring two goals.

To counter-balance any Lee Mason hoodoo, he was the referee in December, when we beat Sunderland 2-1 away for the second successive year. Paulinho and O'Shea(own goal) were our scorers, as we won our second away game in a week on a run which went as far as five consecutive away wins, at which time we had the best away record in the league, and not Manchester United.

We've won five of our last seven games against Sunderland and drawn the other two. Of all the teams in the Premier League, our points per game ratio against them is one of our best - 2.08.

I've been told that Sunderland haven't won a Monday night game for 12 years. Take their recent form (despite giving Liverpool a decent battle in the game before we collapsed at Anfield), and what could go wrong for Spurs?

Everything, of course! Last season's home game was our last game of the season, and it took a last minute Gareth Bale goal to secure the win. That was not enough for us to secure fourth place, because Arsenal also won 1-0 at St. James' Park. I know. It hurts to be reminded about such events.

Poyet opted not to start arguably his best player - England International Adam Johnson - at Liverpool, in his quest for a tooth and nail point or more. Gus will probably feel he can afford to try and play free flowing football tonight, against a Spurs team which has been oh so vulnerable recently.

The good news for Spurs is that both Vlad Chiriches and Emmanuel Adebayor will be available. The bad news is that both Vertonghen and Soldado will be out. Adebayor is not 100% fit, but he will be needed. I'd also say that Chadli's height, strength and power will be a blessing for Spurs in attack.

Dawson or Kaboul will partner Chiriches, and I'd even prefer Dawson, I think. The Dawson - Chiriches pairing has worked very well for us earlier in the season.

There's still no Kyle Walker for Spurs, who have pride to restore and a place in Europe still to be grabbed. For Sunderland, it's an 8 game battle for survival. Future opponents include Everton, Man City, Chelsea and Man Utd, so they will be giving their all for something tonight.

I've gone all optimistic about this one, and have us down for a 3-1 win. COME ON YOU SPURS!

· 15 years ago this week - On 5th April, 1999, Spurs drew 1-1 at Newcastle in an FA Cup semi-final rehearsal.

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